Written by Andrew Jones
We’ve all heard the one about reinventing the wheel. But what happens when your wheels go missing" For North Carolina?s Tattoo Projects, a set of rims that took a detour into the twilight zone transformed a relatively simple BMW custom job into a bureaucratic nightmare that took no less than seven months to straighten out. Persistence, thy name is Rudy Banny. But it only takes one look at the end result to know that it was all worth it. Meet the prettiest pain in the ass you’ll ever seen; a BMW R75 they now call ?Bane?.

?We decided to do something totally different,? says Rudy in opening. ?We wanted to create a bike that we would call a ?standard?. It seems like everybody and their brother is out there building gorgeous café racers, scramblers and trackers these days. And they?re making some really nice stuff ? but honestly, we were just getting a little bored and were ready for something different. So, we eschewed the status quo by building a simple, straight up, meant-to-be-comfortably-ridden-every-day, standard motorcycle.?
Webster?s Dictionary defines a ?bane? as ?a cause of great distress or annoyance?. And as you’ll soon find out, this name fits the bike like a glove. ?A former pal of mine, Richard McDevitt, was threatening to buy it,? continues Banny. ?He taunted me with pictures and illustrious stories of this magnificent barn-find that he was gonna pick up for a mere $1000. I admit it: I was jealous. Fate was on my...